George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

This is the second time in two months that the Senate has considered legislation dealing with the introduction or expansion of the categories of journalists’ privilege. The first occasion was when I introduced a bill to substantially similar effect in this place on 29 September. Remarkably, and very late in the piece, the government has adopted Senator Xenophon’s bill which, as you know, had its origins in the House of Representatives as a bill introduced by the Independent Mr Wilkie as a co-sponsored government bill.

The history of this bill—that is, the bill currently before the chamber just introduced by Senator Xenophon—tells us all we need to know about the history of Labor Party foot dragging and recalcitrance when it comes to reforming journalists’ privilege. The fact of the matter is that of all the political interests represented in the Australian parliament, whether they be the coalition parties, whether they be the Greens or whether they be the Independents, the last political interest to come to the party on the shield laws was the Australian Labor Party.

Ever since this issue became notorious after the Harvey and McManus case several years ago, at which time I called for shield laws in a speech to this chamber which I gave from the back bench, the coalition has been moving in this direction. When I addressed the Public Right to Know Conference in Sydney two years ago this was one of the issues that was under consideration at the conference. It is a policy that the coalition took to the Australian people at the 2010 election, and which was resisted by the government. When I debated the Attorney-General, Mr McClelland, at the Australian Financial Review Attorney-General and shadow Attorney-General’s debate in Sydney a fortnight before the election Mr McClelland, on behalf of the Australian Labor Party, was still resisting law reform in this area.

It was only after the entirely unexpected circumstance of the political complexion of the House of Representatives after the election, which deprived the government of its majority and saw elected as the member for Denison Mr Andrew Wilkie, a person with a long history of interest and agitation in this area, that at last, under pressure of political circumstances, the Australian Labor Party came on board.

Let me just say that again: if it had not been for the fact that there was a hung parliament, to this day the Australian Labor Party would have been resisting journalists’ shield laws. But because of that situation, and because of what they perceived to be the need to propitiate Mr Wilkie, at long last the Australian Labor Party were forced to see the light. And so today they co-sponsor the bill introduced by Mr Wilkie in the House of Representatives and by Senator Xenophon in this place.

The bill which Senator Xenophon has introduced and the bill which I introduced on 29 September are substantially similar, though they are different in one material respect. They broaden the circumstances in which a journalist who is the recipient of confidential information from a source is entitled in a court of law or any other relevant form to refuse without pain or penalty to reveal or disclose that source. As I said years ago in this place when I spoke about the Harvey and McManus case, it has for a long time seemed to me to be an anomaly that the question of the confidentiality of journalists’ sources and its statutory protection should not be brought under the broad umbrella of the general law—most of it non-statutory—which protects commercial relationships. It is something that the Harvey and McManus case exposed very starkly.

I welcome Senator Xenophon’s bill. I would be bound to say that because it so closely resembles my own.